Standing Committee A

[Mr. David Amessin the Chair]

Anne McGuire: On a point of order, Mr. Amess. I wish to clarify something that I said during Tuesday’s debate on amendment No. 257.

David Ruffley: I remember it well.

Anne McGuire: The record will show that I said that certain groups of claimants are excluded from local housing allowance and pathfinder schemes and that we will replicate that provision at the national roll-out. I want to clarify what I said about charities. Claimants will be exempt from local housing allowance schemes only if care and support or supervision is provided by the charity; that replicates exactly the pathfinder position. I thank the Committee for its indulgence.

David Amess: The Committee is most grateful that the Minister has refined her position.

Jim Murphy: On a point of order, Mr. Amess. I shall welcome you to the Chair at a more appropriate point in our proceedings. For the avoidance of doubt, I confirm that during our conversations on Tuesday I referred to an organisation called “working links”; hon. Members will be aware that I should have called it WorkDirections. I hope that I have reassured the Committee.

David Amess: It is entirely in order that both Ministers have tidied up the record.

Clause 27

Local housing allowance

John Penrose: I beg to move amendment No. 266, in page 19, line 15, at end insert—
‘( ) The regulations may provide for local variations in AMHB in the event of a shortage of suitable accommodation for disabled people.’.
The amendment is fairly straightforward. I seek to discover the Government’s approach to dealing with those who, potentially, are tremendously vulnerable—disabled people, their carers and associated family—in those parts of the country that do not have a huge supply of houses available to rent with the potential to be adjusted or improved to allow for their particular needs, or places that have already been adjusted to reflect those needs.
The Under-Secretary pointed out this morning that we do not have a national housing market but a series of local markets. It will depend on the local market as to whether there is an adequate supply of such places that can be adjusted or that have already been adjusted. Given the huge variety of adjustments that may be required for the many different conditions, it is clear that there may be no such houses in some parts of the country. That will lead to problems finding an appropriate house or somewhere at a reasonable rent that could be adjusted.

Tim Boswell: Would my hon. Friend not agree that, by the nature of things, the sample will be rather small, and that any deductions drawn from that sample will result in a correspondingly low degree of confidence?

John Penrose: My hon. Friend is right. When discussing the single room rent restriction, we spoke of the difficulty of finding an accurate factual basis on which the rent officers could make decisions affecting various parts of the country. This is a similar example, but based on a different set of facts.
Another point will cause difficulties. Not only will the disabled have to find places that can be adjusted to meet their needs, but they have what may be classed a non-standard shape of household—for instance, the carer may or may not be a member of the family. That can give rise to an unusual type of family geometry when compared with the normal run of family types for which rent officers will be declaring local housing allowances.
The Under-Secretary may have started to prefigure her answer when summing up this morning in our debate on the single room rent restriction. However, I hope that she can explain a little more about how the Government plan to deal with the problem and that she can reassure us about the steps that they plan to ensure that this important and vulnerable group will be properly looked after when local housing allowances are decided.

Anne McGuire: It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr. Amess. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised the subject in his amendment. I respect the admirable intentions behind it. As he indicated, to a certain extent it follows on from comments made by the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt).
I reassure the Committee that we already have powers to make different provisions for different classes of people under section 175 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992. We can also make different provisions for different areas under section 175(6). However, more importantly, adding the qualification suggested by the amendment to the local housing allowance would undermine its main advantages of simplicity, transparency and fairness.
I hope that the Committee accepts that the majority of disabled recipients live in the social rented sector and will not be covered by the local housing allowance. As I said during a debate on a previous amendment, the discretionary housing payment scheme is also in place. That flexible system will enable the local authority to target help to those who most need it.
I turn to the relevant issue of live-in carers. If the dwelling is the carer’s normal place of residence, the carer will be included as an occupier in the housing benefit calculation; the customer will be entitled to an additional room and a non-dependant deduction will be made. We recognise the different issues; I have already mentioned the charitable and voluntary sectors. The local housing allowance has a built-in flexibility, at an individual level, through discretionary payments. I hope that, with that reassurance, the hon. Gentleman will feel free to withdraw his amendment.

John Penrose: I thank the Under-Secretary for that brisk and comprehensive response, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part ofthe Bill.

David Ruffley: It is a great pleasure to see you on this moderately sunny Thursday afternoon, Mr. Amess.
I give a general welcome to the LHA and what it was trying to achieve—a simpler and fairer system. It was designed to encourage greater personal responsibility among claimants, which is a good thing. It wanted to provide tenants with a bit more choice and to reward their shopping around; that was another noble aim. It also sought to reduce administrative complexity and promote financial inclusion by encouraging a welcome trend among those who were unbanked to open bank accounts so that they had a reliable way of receiving money and paying money to landlords.
However, the devil is always in the detail. Clearly, during a pilot not everything has been nailed down and got right, and we Conservatives will not be so unreasonable as to pretend that the problem has been cracked. However, the clause concretises some of the proposals in the LHA pilots. I should like to pose a series of questions and points, on which we, along with outside groups and claimants, would like reassurance.
The first question is about why there is so little evidence from the evaluations of LHA of moves by existing claimants to more appropriate property—more appropriate in the sense that claimants might pay lower rent and be able to save some of that money under the pilot schemes.
We would really like to know how many people have been taking advantage of the cash retention built into the proposal. It is all very well saying that a lot of shopping around is going on and that lots of claimants are able to retain some of the saving by going to a less expensive property, but can the Minister quantify that? It is a great idea in theory, but is it happening in practice?
The second question relates to shortfalls. Hon. Members, on the Government and the Opposition sides, will have some interesting examples to give, but I shall return to that in a minute.
We also need some information from the Under-Secretary about the IT side of the equation. The housing benefit service in pathfinder areas seems to be doing quite a good job with the system. However, I am led to understand that IT problems, ranging from acute to minor, have been experienced. There is some suggestion that the level of resources needed to support an LHA national roll-out, which is what the clause seeks to do, has been seriously underestimated. I should be grateful if the Under-Secretary would give us her views on that. Is she entirely satisfied that the IT capability and resourcing are there to ensure that the national roll-out goes ahead smoothly?

Tim Boswell: Would my hon. Friend not also want to bear in mind, first, that when any system is changed there are always frictional and transitional problems, and that those transferring from one system to another will be the most vulnerable to that? Secondly, there is a world of difference in scale between a pilot with a comparatively small scale, and an escalation to a nationwide system.

David Ruffley: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Reassurance from the Under-Secretary would be most welcome.
Next, and crucially, for all of us who are involved in the welfare reform conversation, we must ask the question: what has the LHA done for work incentives, and encouraging people back into work, so far as housing benefit is concerned? The evaluation that I have seen did not disclose very much evidence of the LHA improving employment opportunities. One of the evaluation reports—forgive me; I forget which one—said:
“One officer believed that the effects of the LHA in their location was so small—affecting the better off calculation by only £5-£10—that it was of little significance in the claiming/working decision”
by a claimant.
“Others simply do not know if it is affecting such decisions.”
That is the 2006 evaluation report on the Department for Work and Pensions website.
I ask the Under-Secretary to ask herself whether that LHA pilot has done its work on work incentives. What statistical data has she been looking at before deciding to roll out the proposal nationally? Is there more that could be done after the Bill is enacted to ensure that the propositions in the pilot are tweaked so that we can get more people incentivised into work? We all know about the quite vicious withdrawal rates in housing benefit. I hasten to add that that has been true for many years under successive Governments: it is the nature of the beast that there must be sharp withdrawal rates, and it is difficult to flatten the cliff edges. Nevertheless, is there anything that can be done to look again at those pilot schemes to see whether we can do more on housing benefit, and ensure that the disincentive to work is removed or lessened?
My next question relates to the retention of cash should a claimant shop around and find a lower rent. Proposed new subsection (5) provides that a claimant’s HB could exceed their rent liability, if their appropriate LHA rate is higher than their actual rent liability. The Green Paper asked for views on a proposal to cap the amount of HB that claimants can receive in excess of their rent levels. Obviously, we welcome and support that proposal, which is innovative and clever.
The Green Paper states:
“In some areas, claimants are able to receive large cash sums over and above the amount they need to pay their rent. There is a concern that this is fundamentally unfair and that it could have serious implications for work incentives”.
Will the Under-Secretary say something about the level at which the Government are going to set the cap?
Respondents to the Green Paper appreciated the need to restrict cash gains for recipients of LHA, but also expressed concern about the additional complexity that a capping regime at that level might add to the scheme. The Association of London Government has said:
“It is disappointing that the DWP is proposing to cap excess allowances”
as this
“introduces a level of complexity”.
The Government have said that they intend to implement a £15 cap on the LHA that tenants can receive above their rent level. Why was the capping figure set at £15, and will the Under-Secretary acknowledge that that could introduce complexity? Why not set the figure at more than £15? If someone has had the wit and energy to negotiate downwards, why not £20 or £10? I would be interested to hear how that £15 capping figure was arrived at.
My next point relates to the excellent work, which has been encouraged by the Government, done by Citizens Advice, Shelter and others in giving financial advice and support during the roll-out. The scheme is innovative, and it will be new to HB claimants, which is potentially very confusing, and the Government were entirely right to put in place a support and advice system in many of the pilot areas. However, this is where my concern hoves into view. Citizens Advice has been working with local authorities which have been promoting the LHA and reassuring landlords that vulnerable tenants will be provided for and will be able to make payments. It has also been developing relationships with local banks.
Citizens Advice has considered both sides of the equation. It has talked to landlords and banks about opening accounts so that housing benefit payments can go from the Department into a claimant’s account, which can be subject to a direct debit not only for the convenience of the landlord, but so the claimant can plan their finances with some confidence knowing that their housing benefit will go out on the due date and that they will not have a landlord on their case causing them grief.
That is all important support work, and I understand that much of it is done face to face to improve the financial literacy and debt-management skills of the often vulnerable people who need support and benefits, which includes not only housing benefits, but all other forms of benefit. Now, those people are getting that support with the new HB scheme.
I shall give one example how a citizens advice bureau helped a client. The client had a current account that was already seriously overdrawn. She was concerned that when the LHA was paid into her account, her bank would use it to pay off her overdraft, so she would be unable to pay the rent to the landlord because there would not be enough money in the account. She also thought that she would not be able to open another account because of her poor credit rating. The citizens advice bureau helped her to open a basic bank account for her LHA to get around that problem. I am sure that those of us who have spoken to people in pilot areas can produce many other examples of simple but effective intervention.
Despite the importance of that support network for LHA claimants in pilot areas, Citizens Advice reports that a number of bureaux have been informed that funding will be reduced and will not be supplied at the same level on roll-out. Will the Under-Secretary confirm that, and, more generally, tell us what funds will be made available for such support services throughout the country on the national roll-out? Has a figure been earmarked for such work, and can assurances be given to those who are helping to drive up financial literacy skills, such as Citizens Advice and others?
My next point relates to appeal mechanisms against LHA levels. It does not appear that there is a streamlined, simple and efficient appeal system for claimants who have a serious disagreement with a determination.
Finally—

Tim Boswell: As my hon. Friend has mentioned the magic word “finally”, could he reflect on what one might call the rent profit cap, about which he spoke a few moments ago? Is it not worth considering, at least in principle, whether that cap should be linked to the level of local rent determination rather than being somewhat arbitrarily determined as a monetary amount?

David Ruffley: There is no end to my hon. Friend’s skills. He is a wordsmith, a life enhancer, a caring and compassionate historian and a guide, philosopher and friend—to me, at any rate. Importantly, he has added being a policy wonk to his list of accomplishments, because he has just come up with a policy idea that had not occurred to me. That might indeed be one way of doing it. I have already asked the Under-Secretary why the policy cap has been set in the way in which it has, and I am extremely keen to hear the answer.
In the interests of time, I shall not detain the Committee, but I hope that the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) will detain us on the issue of the size of what is referred to under the current regime as a locality. Worrying data have been produced by Citizens Advice. In one particular part of the country, Barnet, the locality—the Bill will change the term, but I shall call it the locality for the sake of simplicity—is very large, which leads to the midpoint of rents for the area being completely unrepresentative of what a real market rent would be in some parts of the locality.
I trust that we shall hear more about that, but if the research conducted by Citizens Advice in Barnet is correct, something must be done. From the evidence that Citizens Advice has provided, it seems that there are serious shortfalls, which need not occur if the rent officer draws the map more sensibly. Why have the localities been allowed to grow so large for the purpose of rent determinations by the rent service? I am not sure what the logic is, but I am sure that it is leading to very large shortfalls in certain parts of the country.
Although LHA is a sensible proposition, there are a few questions, and we need the answers if we are to have full confidence that people whom the scheme is designed to help, and who need and deserve that help, will receive it.

Kali Mountford: I shall not continue with the weather theme in our conversations, but I note that the Room is considerably chillier than before. In the interests of hon. Members at some point being able to go and warm their hands on a hot drink, I shall try to be brief, despite the scope of the clause.
I have not tabled an amendment, because I believe that there will be an opportunity to examine matters when regulations are made. However, I look to Ministers to consider my concerns during passage of the Bill and to return with further recommendations or reassurances that will satisfy me and those who have advised me.
I should like to thank the CHAS Housing Aid Service, for which my husband worked until 1998 as a director in Kirklees and for which I have some affection. I no longer have any direction connection with it, but Niall Holland came to see me and has been extremely helpful in advising me about its concerns. CHAS is a small organisation and therefore was not involved in the consultation, but perhaps that could be remedied in the course of our further deliberations, so that it can discuss matters directly with Ministers and so that proper solutions can be found in the future.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) mentioned shortfalls, and the way in which they have come about. We do not wish to exacerbate an already difficult situation by what we are about to do. The CHAS report, “Behind Closed Doors”, covers a number of large metropolitan areas, including Kirklees, and one of its studies covers south Kirklees in my constituency. For single rooms, the current shortfall is approximately £18, but in more typical rental accommodation, the shortfall is £28 for one-bedroomed accommodation and £16 for two-bedroomed accommodation. For bigger properties, the differences vary considerably. Those shortfalls in my area were replicated in all the areas that were studied, including Bradford, Doncaster, areas right across south and west Yorkshire and beyond to, for example, Exeter. The study concentrates largely on areas in Yorkshire—it is none the worse for that, but the concerns do not only apply to Yorkshire. I suspect that shortfalls are replicated to varying degrees across the country, depending on market rents and on housing demand and availability.
There is another way in which shortfalls may be exacerbated: the move from a mid-point assessment to a median assessment. On the face of it, the Government’s Green Paper entitled “A new deal for welfare: Empowering people to work” gives a useful explanatory note on how median rent could improve the situation. The example given is of a range of 13 houses with rental values between £50 and £200. In that group the median is £150, and the mid-point is £125.
My next problem arises out of the work of rent officers. When rent officers were asked how they apply their own values and about the research that they do in setting those values, we found that they cut out the lowest and the highest of those 13 properties available for rent in order to reach their mid-point.
In a parliamentary question, my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) asked how the median would be reached. He asked specifically whether the median that has been referred to would include all rents or would exclude significantly high or low rents. The answer was that it comes from the rent officers’ market evidence database. Our problem with that is that we know in our own area that the rent officers’ market evidence database already excludes the lowest and the highest rents available in our area. We need to ask whether guidance will be given to rent officers. The median, which would on the face of it bring about an improvement for people, needs to be a true median and not one that is being disguised.

David Ruffley: Am I right in thinking that the size of the locality exacerbates the problem that the hon. Lady is describing?

Kali Mountford: The hon. Gentleman, perhaps not unusually, is a little ahead of me because I am about to come to the size of the locality, which has an impact on deciding a median because the bigger the locality, the larger the variation in rent for similarly sized properties. My area has some leafy and quite wealthy areas. Holmfirth, for example, is a relatively wealthy area when compared with England as a whole, with average annual household incomes of £30,000. Even in Colne Valley—which is not the worst-off in Britain—the average income in the poorest ward is £20,000. Therefore, there is a £10,000 difference in incomes. That is followed by a difference in house prices and rental markets. However, Huddersfield and Dewsbury, which are included in the Kirklees area, have significantly lower incomes per household and a following variation between house prices and rental values.
It is not only that Holmfirth—if anyone wants to visit it, it is the location for “Last of the Summer Wine”—is extremely beautiful and a great tourist attraction. However, the fact that it is a tourist attraction affects its house prices. That is noticeable in my village, Slaithwaite, which is also a tourist attraction due to the production of “Where the Heart is.” It shows how a market can be so easily affected by something that does not appear to be a market change. However, the fact that the television crew decides to film there changes the value of the properties. [Interruption.] That may also have a negative impact on prices—we may look at that in future—but it is currently seen as a beautiful place and one that has a sense of community, something that cannot be easily quantified. I do not know how a rent officer would evaluate that. While a sense of community is one of those things that changes market values, it cannot easily be put into a guidance note to rent officers. Nevertheless, they might look more closely at what is affecting market values in their own areas.
Some areas in the pathways have been very large indeed. Taking Sheffield and Leeds as examples, I am an ex-Sheffield girl myself and, not having lived in one of its leafy areas, knew that there were certain areas in which I would never even have aspired to own a property because the property values in Sheffield vary so greatly. It is a city that was built up from a number of smaller communities, which urbanised over the years as the steel industry grew. My own area is very rural with many formal agricultural properties, smaller villages and even tiny hamlets. There is a great deal of difference between the kind of rent that can be attracted in a tiny hamlet and one that would be attracted in another area. A motorway, for example, could have a huge impact on the market. In some places, it would have a beneficial impact as it would give an easy route to other places where people could go to get work, but in other parts the impact would be seen as detrimental because people do not like the noise.

Jeremy Hunt: Is the hon. Lady concerned that having a single rate for a large area could discourage labour mobility, because it could mean that people looking for work might feel restricted to living in a particular part of the area and might not be able to move to some of the areas that she has referred to? It might impede the desire for people to move back into the labour market if they are out of it.

Kali Mountford: Indeed. The report produced by Labour MPs in 1997-98 was about that very point. It was one of the first surveys of rural communities and was carefully produced, considering the reasons why people were leaving rural areas and going to urban areas to find work: the travel-to-work problems, the community effects, rising house prices that meant that they could not afford to stay and the need to follow the work. There are other effects. In an area such as my constituency, for example, most people go to work in Manchester, Leeds or Sheffield. People going to those towns are followed by the development of four-bedroomed houses, because when people can afford to get on the motorway and tootle on to work in such places but come home to the beautiful Colne Valley with its fantastic scenery, they want to live in the houses that they desire. They change the whole housing market for the people who already live there.

Danny Alexander: I have been following the hon. Lady’s remarks carefully, and I agree with most of what she is saying. Does she think that there is a further problem with the phenomenon that she is describing? A lot of evidence in housing policy suggests that we need to create mixed communities where people of all income groups, families and so on live in the same area. Allowing the broader areas that she is worried about risks putting that policy in jeopardy.

Kali Mountford: Of course, some of that can be catered for by looking at planning guidance, which makes a huge contribution. I have taken many an opportunity to object to some developments that I thought did not add helpfully to the social mix. This is not the only way in which social housing can be provided, and it is not the only way in which we can ensure that houses of a suitable type for rent or cheap purchase can be provided, or indeed some mix of the two so that people can have part-equity. There are other ways of looking at the market, but what does not change is the variation between one locality and another.
Mr. Boswellrose—

Kali Mountford: I am feeling generous, because I am so fond of the hon. Gentleman.

Hon. Members: Favouritism!

Tim Boswell: I am mortified, but also deeply flattered. Has the hon. Lady seen the dilemma that I see? She cogently made the point about striking off the outliers in determining the median. She also made the point about the huge variations within wards that we may all have between affluent and less affluent areas. I am sure that is true. However, given the need to have a good statistical base to inform the rent officer’s determination, one needs a large enough sample, and given the need to be precise enough to deal with local market conditions, one needs a local solution. Does the hon. Lady at least acknowledge that that is a dilemma whoever is in government?

Kali Mountford: Of course it is a dilemma. In order to get more information, CHAS contacted our local authority and asked for the information in order to make a better assessment of the rents available. Unfortunately, the rent officers did not feel—some for not such good reasons, but others for good reasons—that they could provide all the information that might have informed us better in this debate. In their decision not to provide that information, they cited the exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 about revealing information that might be against economic interest or would affect the financial interests of the UK Administration. That is a pity. I can understand some of that. I can understand some of the other reasons that they gave. But given that most of us in a locality know the general amount of rent that is on offer and the kind of benefits that are paid for that type of property, I do not entirely accept what the rent officer said. It might have informed our debate better if we had had a clearer picture of what was really happening in Kirklees, but unfortunately I cannot advise the hon. Gentleman further on that because I simply do not have the information.
But any fool can see by looking in the adverts in the local paper the type of variation that exists. That gives rent officers considerable problems. One would not want to skew a market or to attract a higher rent to an area simply by setting a level that its market value would not attract. That would be a mistake. I do not see why taxpayers should pay for something that the market would not attract. Also, reasonably, people should be able to find a mechanism to ensure that the rent that the market attracts is true and fair and does not lead to further, unexpected and unnecessary consequences, especially around the issue of rent shortfalls. That is what we must focus our minds on.
We must also take account of the fact that markets change constantly. There is not one fixed locality that we can draw a red ring around on a map and say that it is there for all time. This problem surfaced in the case of Heffernan v. Rent Service, which was heard in Sheffield. I will not read out all the determinations by Judge Gilbert on that occasion, but in his examination of the issue of locality he talked at some length about the difficulty of defining a locality. If anyone wants to read the judgment, this is in paragraphs 84 to 87. The problem in that case was that the definition of locality that was being used at that time was not being properly applied. The definition was,
“a broad geographical area made up of a number of neighbourhoods with a mix of property types and tenure where a tenant could, as an alternative to the property in question, reasonably be expected to live and benefit from similar amenities.”
I do not want to go through all the particular types of tenure, property and amenities that this case looked at. We all know about the changes that can happen in an area. A new school might attract more properties and different types of properties; a new amenity and proximity to other desirable amenities can also change markets. There is not one fixed area. That gives us a problem. We need to look at ways through the regulations to advise our rent officers on how to determine what a locality is, rather than use too broad a brush. Unless I am misadvised about how the median will be used, it might mean that people find themselves with a bigger shortfall than we would wish.
We also need to find a way through the system for particular tenants. It is difficult sometimes to understand how rent officers come to their conclusions. Some people have asked me to ask for greater transparency on rent officers. I have thought about this a great deal. If the information about every property that a rent officer looked at were made available for anyone to see, would that in and of itself cause a skewing in the market? Would transparency alone be the solution? I am not absolutely convinced that it would but I should like the Under-Secretary to think about and respond to that. In her assessment, will the greater transparency of the work of the rent officer aid the process or inhibit it? There is scope for greater transparency and perhaps greater liaison between rent officers and other departments. Sometimes rent officers have seemed reluctant to engage with other sectors, especially the housing association and social housing market sector. If they had a better understanding of how the market operates—I am not talking about controlling it—they could come to an understanding about how a reasonable rent could be set in an area.
I am not sure that transparency alone would lead us to the result we want. There may still be times, as in the Heffernan case, when people feel that they have had a raw deal. That being so, at present they either pay their rent or they do not. They either decide to live in a property or they go elsewhere. People have to do their best and get on with what is available to them or make another choice.
There is a problem in the attitude of, “Never mind, if you can’t live in that house go and find a cheaper one”. We all know why people choose to live in a locality. Opposition Members have already raised the issue of people in a travel-to-work area wanting to be nearer to places where there are job opportunities. Some people, for example, parents who are having trouble raising their children, want to be near to relatives or friends who can give them support. I have had cases in my constituency of women who were intimidated by a former partner and who needed people nearby whom they could trust. They were reluctant to move out of their locality and away from those who provided an important support network in their daily lives. That is a reason for people wanting to stay where they are, in the community they are used to.
People do not necessarily want to move their families around. There is much credit in a family having stability, which can be found in the community that people live in, as I know from my constituency experience. It is a credible, and creditable, reason for wanting to stay in a locality, even if the accommodation is much smaller than rent officers think is appropriate.
Another way of dealing with the problem is to consider the work of the rent advisory committee in the Kirklees authority, for example. As well as rent officers, the committee includes estate agents and other people with a housing interest who come together to discuss the area’s general housing needs. They are well informed about what is happening in their local housing market and know what is available, what the houses prices and rentals are likely to be, and what types of amenities are planned that might have an effect on the market. Those people are under-utilised at present and they could add something to the mix, especially if they were used as a point of appeal by those who felt that the rent officer had sent an unreasonable rate for their benefits, given the locality.
Will the Under-Secretary consider regulating for a group as a mechanism for providing an over-layer, so that people can be certain that what they have been offered has been properly considered and know that they have a right of appeal? It is a right that exists throughout the benefit system, yet it seems to be curiously unavailable in this proposal.
That brings me to another point that was raised in respect of the Heffernan case: the appropriate maximum housing benefit, to which the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds alluded. Whether we are talking about the median, the mid-point or any kind of average, it is the maximum that in the end causes the crunch, and all these matters will affect that. If someone as eminent as Judge Gilbart could not find an absolute answer to that because, in his own words, he was having to determine only whether or not the rules had been applied correctly, rather than whether or not the rules were correct, I should like to ensure that the rules that we have are correct and that all tenants feel that they receive a fair deal.

Danny Alexander: It is good to see you in the Chair again, Mr. Amess, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady. Given the range and depth of her comments, in both their extent and their thoughtfulness, it will be interesting to hear the Under-Secretary’s response. She raised a number of issues and I shall not repeat what she said, but I share many of the concerns that she raised.
Let me say at the outset of this clause stand part debate that Liberal Democrat Members, too, welcome the principles behind the local housing allowance. Indeed, all hon. Members who have dealt with housing benefit cases at their constituency surgeries will welcomethe idea of simplifying the housing benefit system. Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will also welcome the idea of promoting greater personal responsibility for the payment of housing benefit in order to promote financial inclusion and, indeed, a general sense of greater responsibility. This is also about greater fairness and choice within the system. My comments will be made in that context, but there are difficult questions that must be asked in addition to the points that have already been raised.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds made an important point on work incentives. I want to press the Under-Secretary on that issue, not least in respect of the withdrawal rate for housing benefit. I should be interested to hear from her whether, under the local housing allowance system, the Government propose that the withdrawal rate for housing benefit should remain the same as it is today, or whether she will seek to amend that, too. I am sure that many members of the Committee will have had a chance to study the tax and benefit tables issued by the Department for Work and Pensions on Tuesday, which show the interaction between the tax system, the tax credits system, the benefits system and withdrawal rates. Marginal deduction rates affect many people on low incomes. I see a few heads nodding around the Committee, so I can see that we are on shared ground here. For example, a lone parent who is a local authority tenant and has child care costs of £100 a week for one child faces a marginal deduction rate of 95.5 per cent. That means that, for every extra pound that that person earns, they get to keep only 4.5p for themselves.
The role of housing benefit in that context is very important, because the marginal deduction rate for housing benefit is high. The way in which it interacts with the tax credits system and other parts of the benefits system exacerbates that problem, so I should be interested to hear from the Under-Secretary what plans she and her ministerial colleagues have to address that important point. Given the way in which the benefits system, housing benefit and the tax credits system interact, many people who are trying hard to take responsibility for their own lives by working—which is what the Committee is talking about—but who are in receipt of housing benefit and other benefits have very poor incentives to improve their employment status, to work more hours or to get a better job. That issue is critical in this debate and I look forward to the Under-Secretary’s comments on it.
I share many of the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Colne Valley on the definitions of broad rental market areas and the operations of rent officers. The provision of information by rent officers and the extent to which that is open to scrutiny will be the subject of debates on amendments under clause 33. I do not propose to dwell on that now, but the definition of broad rental market areas is important. Again, I consider the matter from the perspective of someone who represents a large rural constituency. The hon. Lady raised the question of the extent of broad rental market areas and how that affects local housing allowance determinations and people’s decisions about where they can or cannot live. However, it also affects the so-called “shopping around benefit” of the new local housing allowance.
The Under-Secretary knows the highlands of Scotland well, and it may be that the whole ofthe Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey constituency will be one broad rental market area. That would have a much more severe effect on the ability of people to rent privately anywhere in Badenoch and Strathspey because of the limited supply of housing in those rural communities, where there is little choice and high levels of rent are payable. In that context, it is important that she sets out the Government’s intentions for the way that the broad rental market areas should be drawn up and to what extent she will be guiding rent officers to set smaller or larger areas.
In the city of Inverness, there are quite different rental market areas, as the hon. Member for Colne Valley said about her own part of the world. An average of the whole city would ensure that people in receipt of local housing allowance would in effect only be able to afford to live in part of the city. That is an outcome, which I think all hon. Members would agree is highly undesirable for the reasons I pointed out in an earlier intervention. It would be useful if the Under-Secretary could provide more information about the Government’s intentions in relation to the broad market rent area or localities.
Related to that is the timeliness of LHA determinations on an annual or more frequent basis. I have certainly noticed in Inverness that there is a problem because of the limited supply of the types of housing we are talking about and the housing market conditions, which has caused the price of houses for sale to rise dramatically and far beyond the means of local people. That is a digression, but it is important as it has an impact on rent levels. In many cases, private landlords have seen the value of their properties rise dramatically, which leads to an increase in the rent they can charge. If the rent officers’ determinations are not keeping up with that market-driven process, many more people, even over the course of a year, could be left with dramatic shortfalls.
That does not simply cause financial problems. For example, in Inverness the local housing association has shared evidence with me that that leads to an increase in people presenting themselves as homeless. People cannot meet the gap created by housing benefit not keeping up with the level of rents in the private sector. I would like a word from the Under-Secretary on the question of timeliness of revisions. In some of the pathfinder areas, revisions have taken place monthly and I would be interested to hear whether that is the intention of the Government under this clause.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds rightly referred to the question of vulnerability assessments and the role of Citizens Advice and others in providing support and help to people who might be financially excluded and find the responsibility of paying rent and bills difficult. It is important that the Under-Secretary sets out her intentions in allowing that financial advice to be provided and in supporting organisations such as Citizens Advice as it provides support in all the areas where this is rolled out. That is particularly important at the start of the roll-out because it is at the point of change that many people are more in need of advice. When they are used to the new system, it can operate more fluidly.

David Ruffley: Has the hon. Gentleman been informed by outside bodies that there is a fear that some of the funding might be cut in areas where it is currently supplied?

Danny Alexander: Yes, I have been informed of that, and I am concerned about it. I understand that, although demand for the services will reduce after a year or so, it will never disappear completely, so if the services disappear the number of people who face problems might increase.

David Ruffley: On that point, is the hon. Gentleman not failing to take into account housing benefit onflow?

Danny Alexander: If I misspoke, I apologise to the Committee. Let me rephrase my remarks. At the point of change, a large number of people might move on to the new benefit and need help, and because the new benefit encourages people to take responsibility for themselves, there will be a perpetual flow of people who need financial advice and help. One of the advantages of local housing allowance has undoubtedly been a reduction in complexity, from the point of view of both claimants and benefit administrators. That was clear when I visited Lewisham to talk to people who had been administering the pilot.
The one area in which complexity has increased is making vulnerability assessments. As the Committee knows, when a vulnerability assessment has been made and somebody is to be treated as vulnerable, their housing benefit can be paid directly to the landlord. That is the only category of people for which that can happen automatically. The process of making vulnerability assessments can be a significant new burden for local authorities, and they have addressed it in different ways, whether the test is subjective or objective. Again, I wonder what guidance the Under-Secretary will issue to local authorities on the manner in which vulnerability assessments should be conducted. Overall, the level of complexity seems to be about the same as it was. The process is less complex for most tenants, but it is more complex for those in the vulnerable category.
I have one further question for the Under-Secretary. In responding to the previous debate, she suggested that there might be a degree of policy change in relation to local housing allowance. She said that the proportion of people subject to a single room rent whose costs would be covered by SRR would rise from 26 per cent. to 50 per cent. Will she explain what policy change has been made since the pathfinder pilots that makes her confident that such an increase will take place?

Wayne David: I want to make a number of points, many of which have been put to me by the Welsh Assembly. I understand that the Minister for Social Justice and Regeneration has made a submission in response to the Green Paper, but I should like to ask the Government to clarify some of the points that have been put to me.
Like other parts of the United Kingdom, Wales has benefited from the pathfinder pilots. Two have been held in Conwy and Pembrokeshire, and, like central Government, the Welsh Assembly has learned from them. It is relevant for it to do so because, although social security and housing benefit are not devolved matters, the Welsh Assembly has, under the devolution settlement, developed its own policies on housing and social care. There is a clear implication that changes in legislation will impact on those devolved areas of responsibility.
I want to mention the fact that local housing allowance is to be determined by the median rent. The example on page 98 of the Green Paper shows that that would be more generous than the mid-point calculation that has previously been used. However, I suggest that that is not always the case, because it depends on which figures are cited. It has been suggested that the new method of calculation might result in recipients receiving less generous allowances than has been the case. Moreover, the provision in the Bill is different from the approach in the pathfinder areas. Lessons have been learned, but it was decided that what was tested would not form the basis of the legislation, so we have a different proposal in the Bill. Will the Under-Secretary explain the empirical grounds on which the proposal was based? What evidence is there to back up the argument that the proposal in the Bill is better than the proposal in the pathfinder areas?
In Pembrokeshire, where house prices and rents have recently increased considerably, it has been suggested that if a methodology other than median rent were used for LHA, the calculation would be completely different. I should like that point to be clarified. As for the size criteria for homes and the LHA rate, it is proposed that the calculation should be based on the number of bedrooms rather than the number of living rooms. Although the Green Paper says that that could be a “simpler, more intuitive approach”, a case has not been made why it should be better. Intuition is one thing; hard facts are something else entirely. Again, that approach has not been tested empirically in the pathfinder pilots or elsewhere, and it would be useful if the Under-Secretary were to explain why the Government have reached such a conclusion in the Bill.
Reference has been made to capping, which concerns the difference between the LHA payment and rent costs. The figure of £15 has been mentioned, but I reiterate the request for an explanation why that sum is the magic figure. In the pathfinder areas, it has been an important source of income for many people and, if it is to be reduced, a case should be spelt out for that reduction and a reason given why the figure shouldbe £15.
Worries have been expressed by many people about the complicated nature of housing benefit. There is no doubt that housing benefit is complicated, and we would all welcome a change that would simplify the procedures. It has been said that what the Government are proposing is not as straightforward as it might be, and the two systems will run in parallel for a considerable time. To digress slightly, we all know from the example of the Child Support Agency the difficulties that can arise from such a process. One individual may realise that another individual receives a completely different rate of support, yet the system is meant to be fair to everyone. It will be difficult to explain why, under the new allowance, some people receive one rate while others receive a different rate. The difference is that new entrants will be on the new rate and those on the old system will remain so for some time.
How will the system provide an incentive for people to work? A fundamental element of welfare reform, which is the raison d’être of the Bill, is including an incentive for people to work in the system. It has been suggested that someone on housing benefit who is inclined to work might realise that if they take a job that does not work out, they will be forced back on to the new benefit at a lower rate. Rather than take the risk of that happening, that individual might stay on benefit, although they were inclined to do otherwise. We must tackle that issue head-on and clarify such matters.
With regard to the scope of the LHA, the Bill is focused clearly and precisely on the private sector, but it gives the Government the power, through secondary legislation, to extend the changes to the social sector as well. The Green Paper states, quite correctly:
“We are aware that there are significant differences between the private rental market and social housing, and between the social housing sectors of the UK devolved administrations. Many complex factors will need to be taken into account before a decision is made on exactly how we take forward reform in this sector. Proposals need to be developed with caution and over a longer timescale.”
That is true, but I should like an explanation why it has been deemed necessary to empower the Government to advance proposals for the public sector in the future, rather than saying that there could be new legislation in the future, which could be properly debated and scrutinised by Parliament. My colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government in Cardiff and I would like that point to be clarified.

Adam Afriyie: I want to make a couple of observations and ask the Under-Secretary a couple of questions so that she can justify the clause standing part of the Bill.
Overall, I think that all hon. Members welcome the simplification of housing benefit. There is no dispute, whether from claimants, local authorities or politicians, on whether it is a good thing to simplify an incredibly complicated system. The other good news is that, during the pathways to work pilot schemes, the rent arrears did not necessarily increase, which is a reasonably good sign, and there were no enormously adverse effects from the criteria that were used or the rates that were set.
There has been concern that during the pilots the number of private landlords demanding deposits from people in receipt of housing benefit increased from66 per cent. to 75 per cent., which is a small but significant shift. Will the Under-Secretary say something about that and about the implications for people claiming some form of housing benefit or local housing allowance?
The hon. Member for Colne Valley spoke eloquently and in a sophisticated manner about the nature of a local housing market and the pressures brought to bear on people to live in certain locations. I should like to join the hon. Lady in asking the Under-Secretary to say why the danger and pressure of people being forced to live in a particular area is outweighed by the benefits.
The local housing allowance is based on discriminating in respect of the locality in which someone lives. Does the Under-Secretary consider it to be a discriminatory benefit, because it discriminates on the basis of where somebody lives? If so, will she justify why such discrimination is important?

Tim Boswell: I had not intended to speak, but my remarks are to some extent fired, and even informed—if that is possible—by the interesting contributions by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) and my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie). I am concerned about fairness in dealing with different claimants, which is a theme that I have occasionally developed in this Committee.
It is with some trepidation that I take on the burden of representing the Welsh interest, which is by marriage rather than a direct connection. I have a good deal of sympathy with the hon. Member for Caerphilly. In dealing with areas with a high proportion of second homes, which is a deeply political and controversial issue in all the Celtic countries and in some parts of England, it is at least arguable that no normal housing market is easy to assess. It would be helpful if the Under-Secretary were to explain how rent officers could sterilise artificially high rents driven by artificially high capital values, which are driven by Chelsea money, if I may use that shorthand, and how that would therefore create equity between areas with equivalent indigenous incomes but different costs, even though other circumstances are the same. That is one concern.

Kali Mountford: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for returning the favour. Has he noticed that in areas that are popular to live in, and especially in those attractive to tourists, significantly lower numbers of social housing are available for rent? Choice is narrowed in those circumstances.

Tim Boswell: That is a reasonable concern. On the other side of the equation, a lot of people find themselves in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which is also a feature of some of our tourist areas. I want to flag up with the Under-Secretary concern in the Committee that there should be a degree of equity between claimants and no perverse consequences in the way that the system works.

Danny Alexander: The hon. Gentleman is making a fundamental point. In many rural areas, such as the Scottish highlands, the definition of the rental market area and the level of local housing allowances might well have an impact on whether someone chooses to let out their property privately throughout the year to a regular tenant or to make it a holiday home. In some communities, in which 20, 30 or 40 per cent. of houses might already be second or holiday homes, that decision has a direct impact on the ability of individuals on low wages to live in that community, and therefore on the sustainability of the community asa whole.

Tim Boswell: I agree with the hon. Gentleman; he makes a very good point. I, myself, have surplus farm cottages—not a large number—because farming is so different from what it was, and I do not mind saying to the Committee that that is exactly the dilemma that I rehearse with myself: are we going to let them to local families or perhaps make more money out of holiday lets? I think that Ministers need to focus on that.
I shall pick up on what the hon. Member for Caerphilly said. I worry intensely about the two-tier system of benefits that apply to old and new cases, and occasionally even feel motivated to write to the Attorney-General about my concerns. That is precedented; it has happened in the past. I would get a splendid lawyer’s answer saying, “Parliament has determined that it is all right”. However, our hearts are not comfortable when two systems run in parallel. The underlying concern being expressed is that we should have a fair outcome.

Jeremy Hunt: I wonder whether my hon. Friend can enlighten me on a point with respect to the proposed local housing allowance that I cannot get my head around. Obviously, as the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) said, market prices are dictated in part by Government policy on housing benefit, which impacts on local house prices. However, does my hon. Friend agree that if the Government, as they do now, pay whatever the rent is, wherever a person chooses to live, they could exacerbate the peaks and troughs in local house prices? However—I do not want to pre-empt the Under-Secretary—if we have a single housing allowance, which is the Government’s proposal in the Bill, we could even out those troughs by reducing demand in the most expensive areas and increasing it in the least expensive ones. Does my hon. Friend think that the proposed allowance could have a mitigating effect?

Tim Boswell: It is catching. Another of my colleagues might be making some of the Under-Secretary’s point for her. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The existence of a benefit creates feedback into what happens in the real world. The market clearing prices offered on housing units vary depending on whether people have the benefit in their hands to pay for them. That must be right.
There could be a smoothing effect, but on the other hand, the point that I was emphasising—I shall not do more than that, because I do not wish to subvert the proposals—is that there are wrinkles in relation to areas with a high second home population, differences between old cases and new cases and possible anomalies resulting from the introduction of the new structure depending on the size of the housing area, as the hon. Member for Colne Valley mentioned. None of that utterly rules out the idea, and I do not wish to do so, but it requires the Under-Secretary to respond to a particularly absorbing debate and to give us her thoughts on how to iron out such wrinkles.

Anne McGuire: Well, I suppose that that is one way of inviting a Minister to address the Committee—saying that I am here to iron out the wrinkles. I wonder whether that is stereotyping women Ministers, but I know that that is not what the hon. Gentleman meant. I was only joshing.

Kali Mountford: Joshing!

Anne McGuire: It is an unusual word, one that I have never used before, but it is nearly 3 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, after what has been—I agree with the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell)—an absorbing and wide-ranging debate. I suspect that we will not be able to solve all the problems this afternoon, or iron out all the wrinkles that have been identified. Hopefully, though, we will make a smooth transition to accepting the clause.
I should like to respond to something that the hon. Member for Windsor said, because he made an important point. Perhaps he did not realise how important it was.

David Ruffley: I bet he did.

Anne McGuire: Perhaps I am underestimating his political nous. He spoke about discrimination. Introducing a local housing allowance is about ending discrimination in the private housing market. Like many of my colleagues from all parties, I see adverts in local papers for flats or houses for rent with the sentence below, “No DSS should apply.” By introducing the local housing allowance, we are dealing with long-standing discrimination against those who receive housing benefit. We are translating a person from a benefit recipient to a player in the market.
That links in with the comments of the hon. Member for Windsor about financial inclusion. It is a cultural change for the individual, the landlord sector and society as a whole. Why, when looking for a house, should a person have to identify their personal circumstances and the relationship between them as an individual and the state benefit system? A high moral philosophy underpins the introduction of the local housing allowance, over and above all the issues of transparency and simplification.

Tim Boswell: I entirely agree with the Under-Secretary about the Bill’s intentions, which are admirable. She has put it very well. Would she not agree that it is yet another way of getting away from the old idea of the truck system, where things were made available in kind rather than left to the choice of the autonomous individual? I am with her on that. Does she also agree that it will be desirable in the medium term to consider a transition to other forms of social housing? I did not make the point in my remarks that there is a danger that if that is not done, a further anomaly will open up or intensify between the private rental market and the social housing market.

Anne McGuire: It is a long time since I have heard the truck system discussed. It takes me back to the higher history days that we did in Scotland while everybody else was doing GCSEs and A-levels. I am delighted by the historical analogy. I intend to discuss the social rented sector in more detail later on. We should recognise that the social rented sector is a different beast from the private rented sector. There is very limited capacity in the social rented sector to negotiate rents. That is why—I hope that this will reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly and Mrs. Hart, one of the Ministers in the Welsh Assembly Government—it is not our intention to introduce the local housing allowance into the social rented sector. Yes, it was in the consultation document, but we listened to the consultation responses and recognised that it would be inappropriate to roll it into the social housing sector. I trust that my hon. Friend can take that message and that reassurance back to Mrs. Hart.
I hope that I can get through most of the points that have been made, although I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not deal with every specific detail.

David Ruffley: Just mine.

Anne McGuire: Yes. I appreciate how important the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds is. He asked very specifically, as I would have expected of him, given his background, about the funding of the roll-out. As the hon. Gentleman may be aware, we have set aside some £62 million to support the national roll-out of the housing allowance. The precise allocation of the funding has yet to be decided but, as he also raised in his contribution, the financial support would also ensure that local authorities could support those aspects of financial inclusion that were in the pathfinder areas. Those included help to claimants to access bank accounts—which he fairly identified as one of the very positive elements in the pathfinder areas—the provision of basic financial literacy material, such as how to open a bank account, based on existing DWP literature, signposting the most specialist advice with debt and money management, and the citizens advice bureaux. I hope that that will give the hon. Gentleman some comfort about our analysis of the costs of rolling out the local housing allowance, although we do not yet know what the exact benefit expenditure is. There is obviously an administrative side and a benefit side, and it will depend on the future rents in the private sector, which we have no way of knowing now.
On the issue of IT, which was raised specifically by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, the five major IT suppliers to local authorities have developed local housing allowance software. Some modifications have been needed, but I can give the assurance that the IT will work—she says confidently. [Interruption.] We are nodding in agreement here. If hon. Members see me duck, Mr. Amess, you will know where the answer originated. We will provide the necessary funding to ensure that that happens. We have made an extensive investment in local authorities over the current spending review, which has put in place a firm basis for further improvements over the next few years.
I come to the £15 cap, and why we have decided on that. It was always going to be difficult to decide where the cap was going to be. However, we think that the£15 cap strikes the right balance between providing tenants with a choice over their accommodation and removing the disincentives to work. As I said earlier about other parts of the Bill, the cap is very much about encouraging an incentive to work. We think that the £15 cap is the right amount, and our understanding is that it would leave about 75 per cent. of the caseload unaffected, so the overwhelming majority of the recipients of the allowance would benefit from the cap. 
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds rightly raised the matter of work incentives. We cannot change the culture overnight, but local housing allowance is part of that change. Instead of a person thinking about taking a job not knowing what the impact would be on their housing benefit, the greater transparency of the local housing allowance will ensure that such a person knows how much they will have in their hand to negotiate for accommodation. Jobcentre Plus advisers will be able to say how much a person will get, without having to make all the calculations that are currently undertaken in relation to housing benefit.
Hon. Members will recognise that a range of factors have an influence on whether people move into jobs or not. Housing benefit plays a part, but only a part. We are doing all that we can to raise awareness of the fact that the new housing benefit and local housing allowance can be paid to people in work, because sometimes the information is abroad that the benefit is available only to people who are not in work.
I hope that hon. Members will accept that deciding on the £15 cap was a matter of striking a balance, but we think that it is the right balance.

Danny Alexander: Before the Under-Secretary leaves the subject of work incentives, will she address the question of the withdrawal rate of housing benefit? From memory, I believe that the rate will be 65p in every extra £1 earned. That will have a dramatic impact not only on people’s work incentives, but on their incentives to progress in work, particularly when one considers the way in which the rate interacts with the tax credit system and other aspects of the benefits system.

Anne McGuire: I was going to come to that later, but I will deal with it now. The assessment of the income and the tapers will remain the same as under the housing benefit system. In that respect, it replicates the current scheme. Recent research suggests that the taper is not the main barrier preventing people from moving into work. Sometimes the barrier is that people lack knowledge as to whether they can retain their housing benefit and move into work. However, in the next stage of the reform programme we intend to consider the relationship between all the elements, including the tax credit system, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and housing benefit. Interaction is an issue, but the research indicates that the taper, although important, as the hon. Gentleman said, is not the main barrier preventing people from moving into work.

Danny Alexander: May I suggest that the Minister places the research to which she has referred in the Library, if she has not done so already, so that hon. Members can study it?

Anne McGuire: If the DWP research has been made public, I will place it in the Library. Before Monday, the hon. Gentleman may like to look at the DWP website and he might find that the research is already there.

Jeremy Hunt: It’s a wonderful thing to do at the weekend.

Anne McGuire: Yes, sometimes it can be very cold in Inverness on a weekend night when there is nothing else to do. They have broadband now.
On getting the right size of localities, as the hon. Member for Daventry pointed out, the issue is a matter of judgment. If we go for smaller localities, there is a danger that we could create pockets of deprivation or reinforce deprivation. Having a large number of localities could increase complexity for claimants and local authority staff. We have listened to what hon. Members have said on the issue, and it is a fair point that housing markets are different from area to area. In the highlands and islands, for example, the housing market is starkly different from elsewhere. We will reflect on the comments made on that matter.
On the question whether rent officers should operate with greater transparency, I reassure the Committee that officers liaise with stakeholders, such as local authorities. Such situations will always be difficult. We are demanding greater transparency, and there is a strong view that, in order to maintain their professional independence, officers need to avoid undue influence by some stakeholders. Once again, the key is getting the balance right. We would not necessarily want to specify in guidance how rent officers liaise, but there is an increasing amount of consultation and discussion between them on the matter.
I hope that my next comments will allay some of the fears that we have heard expressed about median rent. Until now, under the current system, including pathfinders, the rent officers looked at the market evidence database, which included all the evidence on rents apart from local authority rents, I think. They then chose to remove the significantly high and low figures in pathfinders to reach the midpoint. At the national roll-out, a true median rent will be used. Outliers, as they have been called, will be excluded. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley is reassured that the figure will be a true median, based on the analysis of rents in the locality; it will not be an artificial figure, because the outliers at the top and the bottom will have been knocked off. I hope that that reassures her.
Kali Mountfordrose—

Anne McGuire: Perhaps not.

Kali Mountford: I will send my hon. Friend a copy of the report, which shows that in some circumstances, the median can be lower than the midpoint that is used at present, whether the top and bottom figures are excluded or not. That is a concern. In every case where the top and bottom figures are excluded, the median is significantly lower than the midpoint that is being used. Will she consider that point?

Anne McGuire: I would be delighted to look at that evidence. My understanding is that under the system that we will roll out, using the median will at least ensure that 50 per cent. of the properties in the locality—if we can call it that for shorthand—will be affordable to those on the new local housing allowance. I would be interested, however, in seeing the evidence that my hon. Friend has highlighted. We are very clear that we want rent officers to use all the evidence in the area.
I am trying to run through all the other points that have been made. The change in size criteria was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly; I assure him that the criteria do not mean that the claimants will have fewer rooms. They mean that local housing allowance rates are set and published according only to the number of bedrooms in a property, which reflects the reality of the letting structure. People do not advertise living rooms and so on; they advertise a three-bedroomed property, for example, and the new allowance will be calculated on that basis.
The Minister from the Welsh Assembly Government has grave concerns about some aspects of the Bill. I know that she has had extensive consultation and discussion with the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), who has primary responsibility for housing benefit. I appreciate that we may not have allayed all her fears, but we are certainly well aware of some of the issues relating to the Welsh Assembly Government. A reassurance has been given that we are sensitive to those concerns, but we think that the roll-out of the local housing allowance is in the best interests of those who are looking to rent in the private sector in Wales, and not only those in other parts of Britain.
On the linking rules, there is an extended payment scheme, of which Mrs. Hart may not be aware, that allows an additional four weeks’ continued payment of LHA if somebody moves into work. In addition, we are not taking the powers to roll out the LHA in the social sector, nor even to test it. We have given continued assurances that we shall not do anything like that.
I hope that I have addressed most of the points in our wide-ranging debate and that I have allayed most concerns. I shall finish where I started: LHA will for the first time put those who are on benefit, and who are looking to rent in the private sector, into a system that should impact on their ability to decide whether to move into employment. It is not just a question of having a system that is more transparent and less complicated. Most importantly, it will give people on benefit the capacity, for the first time, to negotiate in the private sector rental market in the same way as has long been the case for those who are not on housing benefit.
With those few—or rather, with those extensive—comments, I commend clause 27 to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 28

Loss of housing benefit following eviction for anti-social behaviour, etc.

David Amess: There was originally a slight mistake on the amendment paper but hon. Members now have the correct version.

Danny Alexander: I beg to move amendmentNo. 263, in page 24, line 44, at end add—
‘130H Limitation
(1) Regulations to which this section applies may not remain in force after January 2010.
(2) This section applies to regulations made under any of sections 130B to 130F above.’.
Thank you for drawing the Committee’s attention to the correct version of the amendment, Mr. Amess. The amendment proposes what is colloquially known as a sunset provision that would ensure that regulations under the clause would cease to have effect after January 2010. The arguments in favour pertain to the content of the clause, and I hope that you will permit me to range quite widely, in the hope that the need for a clause stand part debate may thereby be obviated—from my point of view at least. [Interruption.] I was going to say that the clause refers to antisocial behaviour. We may have just seen an example. I do not think that the hon. Member for South-West Surrey is in receipt of an antisocial behaviour order, but maybe one would be appropriate. I do not know what other Committee members think.

Jeremy Hunt: May I ask the hon. Gentleman to clarify for the sake of the record why he thinks that it might be appropriate for me to be in receipt of an antisocial behaviour order?

Danny Alexander: I shall not try the Chairman’s patience too much on that. Throwing bottles around is generally deemed to be at the antisocial end of the spectrum, although I appreciate that in this case it was accidental and I withdraw my comment.
There are significant concerns as to the powers in the Bill, as I said on Second Reading. I understand that the Government intend to pilot the idea, but as Committee members know, the Bill contains power whereby the housing benefit of someone who has been evicted for antisocial behaviour can be progressively sanctioned to nil for a period of up to five years. That is quite a severe financial sanction.
The Under-Secretary may wish to clarify, but it seems that the power will not be that widely used. I have seen figures—I think that they are public—indicating that the Government envisage 1,500 cases. I gather that in Scotland there might be six cases where this might apply. In practice, given the severity of the sanction and the poor quality of rehabilitation services for antisocial behaviour in many parts of the country, it may be used much less than that. This power is in the Bill more to grab headlines than to do anything serious to tackle antisocial behaviour. That would be my first reason for worrying about allowing these powers to remain in the Bill and to be rolled out across the country without any further primary legislation or debate on the Floor of the House.
I have listened to the views of a wide variety of external organisations and I have not been able to find a single organisation that has lobbied in favour of these provisions. The Under-Secretary may have been lobbied extensively in favour of them, but I certainly have not. Whether it is the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group, the Child Poverty Action Group, the British Council of Disabled People, Shelter, the National Housing Federation and especially the National Landlords Association, they have all made strong representations against the inclusion of these powers. There are a number of reasons for that.
First, there is the question that I raised on Second Reading about the impact on families and children. There is a serious concern that removing housing benefit could have unintended consequences for the dependants of those people, whether it is the children of the person who is behaving antisocially or perhaps the parents if the child is behaving antisocially.There were reports today, according to a study for the Youth Justice Board, of antisocial behaviour orders becoming a badge of honour among young people. Of the 137 young people surveyed, 67 have breached their ASBOs at least once, 42 more than once and six on six occasions or more. There are already questions about the way in which this approach is working.
When it is the antisocial behaviour of a child that has resulted in an eviction, the parent may be unable to control the child and the rehabilitation services may not be available in that area. As hon. Members know, there are serious concerns about the quality of rehabilitation services for antisocial behaviour that are available in different parts of the country, so we could have a postcode lottery in the implementation of this provision.

Natascha Engel: One of the other elements that has alarmed people, quite apart from a postcode lottery, is that in the former pit villages that I represent where there was a lot of social housing and many people exercised the right to buy and are now private tenants, there is one rule for private tenants and a completely different one for those people who are in social housing. From the outside they appear to be exactly the same sort of houses, and the provision seems to discriminate against those with less money.

Danny Alexander: The hon. Lady makes a very important point and I was going to come to that. It is yet another reason why a sunset clause, which would cause the powers of the Bill to lapse after three years so that the matter would have to come back to the Floor of the House to be debated before it could be rolled out across the country, would be a good idea.
Another objection to these powers is that they are discriminatory between people in receipt of housing benefit and those who are not. There is no such sanction for someone who is not in receipt of housing benefit. I should be grateful for the Under-Secretary’s response to this. On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) referred to the idea of probationary tenancies as an alternative to these sanctions as they could have a wider application.

Tim Boswell: I cannot forget to allow my civil libertarian instincts to come out from time to time on these sorts of issues. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the clause appears to set no limits on the warning that a local authority may issue? Not many people who have been evicted from a house will have a tame in-house lawyer to take them to judicial review, but nevertheless, I suppose that local authorities always have a duty to be reasonable. However, there is no circumscription of the powers. The clause does not even say that they must be relevant to the housing experience as such—if I may put it that way. Should not that be judicially tied down a little?

Danny Alexander: As usual, the hon. Gentleman makes a useful and important point, which I hope the Under-Secretary will consider in her response.

Kali Mountford: May I take the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) raised a bit further? The issue is not about whether a person lives next door to somebody who is also in receipt of housing benefit, but about people who live in similar accommodation and who are sometimes also on low pay or housing benefit. However, the terms of their tenancies vary, because some people rent from private landlords and some live in social housing. The problem is that sanctions can apply in social housing, but no sanctions apply where accommodation has been bought. People living in such accommodation can cause dreadful mayhem for the people in their neighbourhood. It is the tenants who live in the locality who want some sanction to apply, not the landlords who want their rent.

Danny Alexander: My response to that—I thought that this was the point that the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire was making, but perhaps I misunderstood—is that antisocial behaviour can be caused by a range of people, irrespective of the nature of their tenancy or whether they receive housing benefit. I am sure that the hon. Member for Colne Valley would not claim that there is a preponderance of antisocial behaviour among housing benefit recipients, so her comment does not affect my argument in favour of restricting the powers in the Bill.

Natascha Engel: Just to clarify, the issue really has nothing to do with housing benefit and everything to do with whether a person is in social housing as opposed to privately owned housing. That is the distinction. It is wrong to have additional powers to penalise somebody for being in social housing rather than a privately owned property.

Danny Alexander: The hon. Lady makes a fair point, but my argument is that the problems that I have identified with the powers in the Bill are such that they apply whether somebody is in social housing, private sector housing or whatever. I seek to curtail those powers with the amendment. She is right that there is an argument for the same considerations to apply to everybody, but I question the motivation behind introducing the powers, their potential impact and the extent to which the Government should be free to continue to roll such powers out throughout the country without having further recourse to Parliament through primary legislation. That is what I should like them to have to do, which is why I seek to have the amendment inserted into the Bill.

Jeremy Hunt: I slightly disagree with the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Members for Colne Valley and for North-East Derbyshire on one point. Of course anyone is capable of antisocial behaviour, whether they are in the private rented sector, the social housing sector or whatever. However if they are in receipt of my and other taxpayers’ money, which allows them to live there, I object to their using that to behave antisocially.
Kali Mountfordindicated assent.

Jeremy Hunt: Perhaps I am not disagreeing with the hon. Lady, in which case I am delighted to agree with her. My point is that I object to such behaviour as a taxpayer. As taxpayers, we are perfectly at liberty to say that if we subsidise someone’s living costs, we expect them to use that money to behave responsibly. Furthermore, other people on the street, who are also taxpayers, feel that particularly strongly.

Danny Alexander: I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. My point is not that we should not be tough with people who are guilty of antisocial behaviour. Many measures are available to deal with such behaviour and Liberal Democrat Members have made proposals for others. I am just not convinced that this measure will have the consequence that we all desire—that of curtailing antisocial behaviour. I suspect that we are all agreed on that. This is a question—to use an earlier phrase of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds—about means and practicalities, not ends or principles.
Having expressed reservations about the powers in this Bill, I conclude by asking the Under-Secretary to reflect on another issue. I know that one of the conditions in the provision is that, in addition to someone having to be evicted from their tenancy, they would also have to have refused engagement with rehabilitation services. It is important to say that the quality of rehabilitation services is patchy across the country. What proposals does the Under-Secretary have to improve those services and what right of appeal does she have in mind against these sanctions, particularly on those grounds? Is she aware—and I am sure, as the Minister with responsibility for disabled people, that she will be—of the problem of mislabelling disabled people, who have been inappropriately served with an antisocial behaviour disorder? Two out of three individuals described as being involved in antisocial behaviour have some form of vulnerability, 18 per cent. have a mental disability and 9 per cent. have a physical disability. Is she really saying that people who are already in a vulnerable position—for a variety of reasons, perhaps to do with a lack of understanding among the services dealing with antisocial behaviour—should have their benefit taken away as well as being evicted?

David Ruffley: Does that not give rise to the thought that has been pursued throughout the Committee’s proceedings, that those who are threatening sanctions—in local government and elsewhere—need better training, not just on disability awareness, but on mental health conditions? They have huge powers at their disposal to affect the lives of people, whether through eviction or benefit sanctioning as under this clause. We need to do a better job in training public sector decision makers.

Danny Alexander: I could not agree with the hon. Gentleman more. That point has been made throughout the deliberations on part 1 of the Bill. It applies equally here. If the people engaged in administering the powers do not have the knowledge or understanding of the range of conditions that they might be dealing with, some extremely vulnerable people could end up having their benefit taken away from them inappropriately.
I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary would reflect on that point in her response and also on what consideration the Government have given to the impact of these measures on child poverty. That is a serious matter that the Government have not adequately addressed. I share the concern of the Child Poverty Action Group that if these measures are used inappropriately, they could have a serious effect on some vulnerable young people and families.
For all those reasons, I hope that the Committee will consider supporting this amendment on the basis that it seeks to restrict the application of powers in this Bill for a limited period. That would allow the Government, if they wished to do so, to pilot these measures—to get their press releases out and so on—but would require them to come back to the House for further primary legislation before these provisions were rolled out across the country. This would enable the Government to report back on the impact they had found in those areas that I have discussed and many others. Without that, we might be in a seriously difficult position indeed.

David Ruffley: I rise to support the amendment for one very simple reason: the Conservative Opposition have a track record of supporting sunset clauses and this is a sunset clause of great importance because it relates to a proposal that, to my mind, is easily the most controversial in the Bill. Frankly, the Opposition have serious problems with it.
The amendment would in effect turn the clause into a pilot. If the powers are used—I hope that they are not—Parliament could look at the evidence for the effect of the powers, not only on the income levels of the adults sanctioned, but the knock-on effects on the children in a sanctioned household, if there are any. Parliament would also be able to examine the approach of local authorities, the advice given to them and, most importantly, the available rehabilitation services, which should if successful preclude the need for benefit docking.
All those things need to be tested to destruction. One way in which to do that is to set a time limit for the clause. In that spirit of evidence-based policy making to ensure good public policy and that those who are potentially the most vulnerable have their interests protected, I support the amendment.

Anne McGuire: I trust that I can provide a reassurance that will allow the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw his amendment and obviously encourage others to support its withdrawal.
Before I get to what I hope will be the killer point, I shall deal with some of the general ones that havebeen raised. I agree with the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds that we should test the clause, not necessarily to destruction, but rigorously and robustly through the piloting stage. That is why we want the powers to pilot. I can reassure the Committee that, during the piloting period, we will discover whether local authorities find it useful. We have an undertaking already from Sandy Bruce-Lockhart who has indicated that he is willing, on behalf of the Local Government Association, to enter into serious discussions with us. So we appreciate that local authorities need to feel that it is a useful tool.
We need to look at whether the sanction is an effective incentive to the take-up of rehabilitation, which I shall come to in a moment. We need to look also at the resources needed to set it up and run it, the impact on landlords and the effect on rent arrears—whether it will be sustainable. We will consider also the impact on housing and homelessness, which will include vulnerable people, and on charities and voluntary bodies, as well as the profiles of those sanctioned. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey is correct: we estimate that no more than 1,500 people will be sanctioned because of the way in which it will kick in.
We need also to understand why people are prepared to be evicted when significant support is offered to them—the imponderable in all this. In a rational discussion, I would have thought that given the choice between being evicted and potentially being made homeless or taking up support, rehabilitation and help with their behaviour, people would accept the latter. We must have a deeper understanding of why that is not always the case, although, as the hon. Gentleman said, the figures show that it is still a tiny minority involved. We need to consider monitoring in the non-pilot authority areas to see whether there is any significant difference throughout the country.
Rehabilitation and the right support have made a difference to how people operate in considering their behaviour. In Scotland, the superb Dundee families project was highly controversial when it was introduced. Many Labour members were astonished at the bravery of some of our Labour colleagues in Dundee who agreed to establish that project. That brave step has proved to be a very positive experience for most of the people who have been supported.

Jeremy Hunt: As it was such an interesting project, could the Under-Secretary tell us what it did?

Anne McGuire: It offered support for those families whose behaviour was so unacceptable that they were no longer welcome in their own communities. It took them out of that community and put them into what was called core housing, a group of houses concentrated in one area. Intensive work was done with those families. I shall read an extract from one case study, which states:
“My problems before I became involved with the Dundee Families Project were not being able to cope with my kids’ behaviour. There had been complaints from previous neighbours and I was subsequently homeless and wanted to get a home for me and the kids and I wanted to be happy again. I was trying to come to terms with the recent loss of my husband and I was not coping well. I was very depressed at the time and having panic attacks.”
Those are the images that the hon. Gentleman conjured up. The letter goes on:
“When I became involved with the Dundee Families Project I was offered help to manage the kids’ behaviour through the Dundee Families Project Parent Support Group and individual work. The children also got help...We were living in the project for about eight months before we got our dispersed flat.”
People move out of the core housing into a dispersed flat where there is still support. The letter continued:
“We got a lot of support. I owe a lot to the Dundee Families Project for all the help they have given me for the past20 months.”
Although the Dundee example is about families, the majority of people that we envisage would be part of the sanctions regime would, we suspect, be mainly, but not exclusively, single people whose behaviour is unacceptable to their neighbours in the social rented sector and in the private rented sector. Recipients of housing benefit should not be treated differently in the two sectors.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

Anne McGuire: Where was I? Oh yes, I was in Dundee. It is a lovely place to be.

Danny Alexander: Before the break, the Under-Secretary was talking, quite rightly, about the achievements of the Dundee families project. Can she confirm for the record that it did not involve any form of benefit sanction?

Anne McGuire: I was using the project as an illustration of the importance of rehabilitation, not necessarily in connection with our current proposals. I was asked about the evaluation of the success rate. Using a variety of care indicators with the most difficult families, it is about 84 per cent. I was being illustrative rather than saying that such a process would be used in all cases.

Adam Afriyie: On the basis of those wonderful results, which did not require benefit sanction, why is there a mad rush to enact the clause immediately when, clearly, there are many other ways the results can be achieved?

Anne McGuire: I thought I had dealt with that matter in my opening comments about the series of issues that we want to look at in the piloting process. The amendment is unacceptable to us. In some respects, that is because of the way in which the parliamentary process operates. However, I thought it was important to deal with some of the points raised in the debate. Obviously, there will be a right of appeal against the imposition of a sanction, as there has been in relation to all areas of sanction.
I need to be clear: we do not want people to be sanctioned and we do not want to impose a sanction on housing benefit. It is important to emphasise that we want people who have been evicted for antisocial and unacceptable behaviour to be offered the option of looking at that behaviour with a view to going back into housing benefit. The policy will be successful if it encourages people to take up rehabilitation. If no sanction is imposed, we will consider the policy to be successful.
We are asking the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw his amendment because we intend to commence the pilots for the proposal as soon as is practical—in the winter of 2007-08. I assure hon. Members that we are considering pilots of two years only. At the end of that time, we will decide whether to roll out nationally on the basis of a full evaluation of the effectiveness of the scheme, using the criteria that I have indicated. That evaluation will include a full regulatory impact assessment for the proposal. If the hon. Gentleman’s amendment were to be agreed, the difficulty would be that there would be no flexibility as to the start time. He is asking for a sunset clause at a time when, because of the parliamentary process, we cannot be definite about when we can start the pilots. However, I can tell the Committee that we are looking at two years only, and that when we come to discuss the regulations we will have a much clearer idea as to when the pilots will commence and, therefore, end. The hon. Gentleman would be proposing a sunset clause without knowing when sunrise was going to take place, so I ask him to withdraw the amendment.

Danny Alexander: I am grateful to the Under-Secretary, and I hear what she says about the parliamentary process. However, on Tuesday we debated the length of pilot projects, and I tabled a probing amendment to find out whether she thought that two years was long enough. She said that she did, and that is the case here too. The sunset clause is important because the critical issue for me is that Ministers, having evaluated the pilots, should return to the Floor of the House to debate the matter. It is not merely a question of rolling out regulations.

Question put, That the amendment be made—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 8.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question proposed,That the clause stand part ofthe Bill.

David Ruffley: We have just had quite a wide-ranging debate, but I wish to flag up one or two points. I am rather sceptical about the clause and the powers that it contains. I was heartened by the Under-Secretary’s comments, although not so heartened that I decided to vote with her. I am not casting any aspersions on DWP Ministers, particularly the two before us today, who are good eggs, but I shall cast aspersions on the Prime Minister’s motives. Yes, the end of consensus has come.
I want to evidence that proposition by asking this question: how did the clause get into the Bill? I ask because the Government first floated the withdrawal of housing benefit from those who commit antisocial behaviour in their 2000 housing Green Paper. It was acknowledged at the time, after the consultation, that it would be difficult to reduce or withdraw housing benefit from a claimant guilty of such behaviour without adversely impacting innocent family members. After that Green Paper, Ministers pretty much gotit right. What then happened was that a DWP consultation paper on the proposed withdrawal of housing benefit—[Interruption.]

David Amess: Order. I am afraid that the hon. Member is not allowed in the Committee. I kindly ask him to withdraw if the Minister needs to have a conversation.

David Ruffley: It is a disgraceful diversionary tactic to try to put the shadow welfare reform Minister off his stride, but it will not succeed. [Interruption.] And now the chuntering from a sedentary position. The Government obviously do not like this very much, but I shall continue.
In 2000, Ministers in the DWP decided that withdrawing housing benefit from those who committed antisocial behaviour was a bad idea. They did not want to go ahead with it. It was then resurrected in May 2003 in a DWP consultation paper. That paper gave two options. One involved a sanction triggered by court action, which is what we have here, and the second involved administrative action without the trigger of court proceedings. At that time, both options were opposed not just by a majority but by an overwhelming majority of respondents to the consultation.
I shall list those who oppose sanctions triggered by court action, which is materially what is in the clause. They know quite a bit about the subject: Barnardo’s, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Children’s Society, Citizens Advice, Crisis, Homeless Link, Mencap, Mind, the National Autistic Society, the National Children’s Home, Turning Point and Shelter.
Objections were also registered by those representing professionals working in the field, including—the list is not exhaustive—the Association of Directors of Social Services, the British Association of Social Workers, the British Property Federation, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the Housing Corporation, the Housing Law Practitioners Association, the National Housing Federation, the Small Landlords Association, the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group and the Tenants and Residents Organisations of England.
Ministers have obviously been considering the issue and not wanting to get on with it, because there has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. In the face of all that opposition, it went quiet for a bit, but not without others piling in to say that it was a bad idea. Eighteen of the 20 community safety partnerships that responded to the consultation opposed the sanction because it was not seen as a useful additional tool. The most persuasive objections came from local authorities themselves—145 out of the 178 authorities that responded opposed the sanction, not only because it would compromise their rental income, but mainly because they wanted to concentrate on better use of existing powers. Let me underline that point. Opposition Members are not saying that there should not be tough measures on antisocial behaviour. As Shelter and others rightly point out, the victims of antisocial behaviour are often precisely the people whom Shelter and other bodies have as customers. We all know that from our constituencies. We are not against tough measures, but we want to know more about why the existing powers are deemed not to be strong enough.
There was then a formal announcement in June 2006 by the Secretary of State—I keep on getting confused as there are so many of them, but it must have been the current Secretary of State—on the reintroduction of plans to withdraw housing benefit from those guilty of antisocial behaviour. I wonder whether it was all his own idea, or did it have more to do with the Prime Minister’s respect agenda, which he wanted to get kick-started? Most people believe that it was a headline-grabbing measure, inspired by No. 10. That would not be a great surprise to me. I do not blame the Ministers here today, or departmental officials; I think that they probably find it as unwise as all the groups that I have listed find it. That is because there are existing powers, so it cannot be for any reason other than No. 10 wanted to headline it. That is the way it looks, not just to me but to many other people. The Under-Secretary made a good fist of defending that. I repeat: the fact that she says it will be subject to rigorous piloting and scrutiny is welcome. However, I can assure her that we will be watching the evaluations of the pilot like hawks.

Jeremy Hunt: We are not doves.

David Ruffley: My hon. Friend says from a sedentary position that we are not doves. Could we be hawkish doves? I do not know, but we are going to scrutinise it very carefully and look at it like hawks.
I have two final points. First, the clause makes it clear that rehabilitation services and support will be deployed. I hope that that will be before any decision to dock the benefit, which is clearly envisioned in the legislation. That is fine, but there are doubts as to whether those rehabilitation services will be widely available. My understanding is that the DWP says the rehabilitation that is envisioned in the clause will be provided through existing services. Is more money going to be made available? Can the Minister tell us specifically about that? In the experience of all of us, current levels of, for example, drug and alcohol dependency services and mental health services are not anywhere near good enough. We all share a responsibility for that; we can always do more and always do better. However, the hon. Lady cannot rely on the proposal contained in this clause about their being rehabilitation and warning notices and help and support before any benefit sanction if those rehabilitation services are not properly resourced. It is not just about help and advice with managing one’s lifestyle; it could actually involve quite sharp-end interventions to do with drugs and health conditions.

Tim Boswell: Does my hon. Friend agree that the whole point is that many people, such as those we have been hearing about in relation to the Dundee families project, require the most intense attention, a greatdeal of time and what might be called “tough love”. Although it is not clear to me, is it clear to himwhether the existence of rehabilitation services in the Government’s terms is a formal condition of proceeding? If that is so, is there any guarantee written in that those rehabilitation services have to be of an adequate or appropriate quality?

David Ruffley: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I understand that rehabilitation services would have to be provided and fail before any sanction was deployed. We should be comfortable with the terms of the Bill. There is a firewall, as it were, in that rehabilitation services have to be accessed and must be succeeding in turning around the offending behaviour. However, I am concerned that, if those services are not adequately resourced, they might not be adequate. The Under-Secretary needs to say whether the provision will be funded from existing budgets or whether there will be additional money.
Perhaps the Under-Secretary will be open to a proposal from Shelter and Citizens Advice that might be worth piloting, in relation to those persons in hardship—mums and people over 60 and others—who might be subject to a sanction. Shelter says that the30 per cent. reduction in benefit, which is part of the current proposals, is too high and would be quite a big hit to the family finances. Shelter suggests reasonably that, where there is hardship, the 30 per cent. reduction should be limited to 10 per cent. throughout the whole restriction period, rather than there being a 30 per cent. reduction in the post-eight-week period. The Under-Secretary might want to take that on board in the trialling and piloting that she eloquently described, which will happen over a two-year period. Is that is on her agenda?
I started by departing from the path of righteous, but I have veered back. We appreciate what the Under-Secretary said in the previous debate, but could she consider Shelter’s proposal and tell the Committee a bit more about resourcing? I know that, if she had the money, she would put it in tomorrow. However, there is a question about whether the Treasury will be similarly minded.

Danny Alexander: I will be brief. I have a few pertinent points to make, which I aired in the previous debate but to which the Minister did not respond.
I share the concern of the hon. Member for BurySt. Edmunds that the principal motivation behind these measures is more to grab headlines than to deal effectively with problems of antisocial behaviour. This is more legislation-as-Government-press-release than something that is seriously intended to do the job that all parties agree on: taking tough measures that will be effective in tackling antisocial behaviour.
I share the concern of the hon. Member for BurySt. Edmunds on funding for rehabilitation services. To what extent does the Under-Secretary expect that services of the quality of the Dundee families project will be available in every area of the country? Will such services have to be available and exist as a condition before the sanction proposed in the measures can be applied?
I want to reiterate my concerns about two particular groups of people. The Under-Secretary has said that the Government intend the measure largely to apply to single people, but can she be sure of that? I am concerned about the impact on families with dependent children and child poverty. I would be grateful if she were to address that issue.
I would also be grateful if the Under-Secretary were to address the impact of sanctions on those people, whom I mentioned before, who are wrongly labelled as antisocial, where the issue might be a consequence of a mental health problem or a lack of understanding and training. According to some research, that is the case with 18 per cent. of those who currently have antisocial behaviour orders. It would be a matter of grave concern to both sides of the Committee if people who are mislabelled as a result of mental health problems have their benefits sanctioned, too.
Finally, as the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has said, it might be useful to hear the Under-Secretary’s response to the proposal that has been put forward by Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group about reducing the level of sanctions in the case of vulnerable people. I add to that a question about the unusually lengthy period for which sanctions can apply, which is up to five years. Will the Under-Secretary tell the Committee more about the Government’s thinking on having sanctions in place for such a long period?

Kali Mountford: I want to ask the Under-Secretary to take special notice of one group of people. I fully understand the reason behind the piloting of the scheme and all the safeguards that she has outlined, which will hopefully bring somebody into line, if we can put it that way, before any sanction is necessary. The group of people who I hope receive special attention in the pilot is people experiencing domestic violence.
Domestic violence is often regarded as antisocial behaviour, but there is a much deeper concern of which we should all be aware. I know that the police deal with domestic violence differently in different areas. In my area, there is a database which should be referred to at every report of any kind of incident in which a victim of domestic violence is named. However, it does not always work, and I know that other areas do not have a similar database. I am anxious to ensure that what is apparently antisocial behaviour, but is actually of much deeper concern, is properly accounted for in the pilot.

Anne McGuire: It is worth reflecting on the fact that this is not the first time that sanctions have been introduced into the benefits system. Indeed, sanctions have been part of the benefit system since 1913, so in many respects the Liberals and their successors blazed a trail on sanctions. I have to admit that I am not sure whether the sanctions that were imposed then would be supported by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and his party now.
We need to return to the point about the rights and responsibilities agenda. For a moment, the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds lost his warm and cuddly cool—my hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have been taking bets on how long it would last. My hon. Friend and I will not divorce ourselves in any way from the respect agenda, because we think it important that we rebalance the rights and responsibilities agenda in this country—I know that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds was perhaps trying to make a political point in looking towards the Prime Minister. I should reassure the Committee that the proposal is not about antisocial behaviour orders, but about antisocial behaviour and what we can do to help deal with some aspects of it. It has the overwhelming support of most of my colleagues in the parliamentary Labour party, because we recognise that many communities are blighted by serious antisocial behaviour. Yet, even after eviction has taken place, there is no current sanction to stop those who make their neighbours’ lives a total misery from going back into the housing sector with the same rights and privileges. That is a powerful argument.
We are not proposing sanctions against people who are currently in tenancies, because the most severe sanction—eviction—will already have taken place. We shall not write off people after eviction, even if it is only 1,500 people, or the six people in Scotland—I feel like Abraham trying to find 100 just people. Even if people’s behaviour has been so bad that the local authority has gone to court, has presented evidence, and has gone through the long process of eviction, we will still offer people rehabilitation, if they want it, to protect their rights under the benefits system. I think that that is a reasonable deal, given the misery that is sometimes caused by antisocial behaviour—even in sunny Inverness.

Danny Alexander: The Under-Secretary is absolutely right. Antisocial behaviour is an incredibly serious problem and blights hundreds of families in my constituency and in the constituency of every hon. Member. There is no disagreement in the Committee on the need to take tough measures to tackle antisocial behaviour. I referred earlier to an idea proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale, which, while serving a similar purpose, may in some ways even be tougher—the introduction of probationary tenancies so that people may lose not their benefits, but their house.

Anne McGuire: I wonder whether we are talking at cross-purposes. I have said that the sanction will not kick in until two criteria are met. One is that the person has already lost their house, and the second is that they have refused to accept rehabilitation. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is agreeing or disagreeing with me, or whether, like many Liberal Democrats, as it is late on a Thursday afternoon, he is doing both. It is all right for him to say that he is against antisocial behaviour, but him and his party need to answer a question. The question concerns the worst offenders, of whom we estimate there are 1,500 in the country, who are so bad in their behaviour both in the private and publicly rented sectors that their private or social landlord has gone to the bother and expense of serving an eviction order. Is he not willing at least to try ways of bringing those people back into the housing fold?

Jeremy Hunt: The Under-Secretary spoke persuasively about her vision of what should happen under the system. If someone behaves antisocially, goes through the process that she has described, is evicted, refuses rehabilitation and is then not offered any support for housing benefit, what will happen next and where will that person go?

Anne McGuire: This is the great philosophical argument that we are all going to have to deal with—the rights and responsibilities issue. We cannot say that people can opt out of their responsibilities to other members of their community, and that is not only in respect of accepting a benefit from the state. The hon. Gentleman perhaps answered his question in a previous debate, although a little more starkly than I would have done. I reassure the Committee that if the individual co-operates with the rehabilitation process and the support that will be built into it, the sanction can be lifted at any point. That is what we are seeking to do.
When he returns to Inverness tonight, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey might wish to reflect on what he will say to the neighbours of the six people who are so bad that Highland council is going to evict them if he will not support the piloting—we are not rolling it out—of the sanction regime. The sanction regime tells people starkly, “We are at the end of our tether with your behaviour. We are still prepared to invest in you and we still want to get you back into the mainstream, but you have to do something too.” The Dundee projects and other projects have shown that that can happen, if there is give and take on both sides by the state and the community and by the individual.
I turn to the issue of resources, which the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has mentioned. The Government are investing heavily in rehabilitation. The respect action plan announced our commitment to establish a national network of family intervention centres. We are on track to deliver them in 50 areas by the end of 2006.
Mr. Boswellrose—

Anne McGuire: This might deal with the hon. Gentleman’s question. If the appropriate support is not available in the local authority, that authority would not be able to use the sanction, so the two go hand in hand. I do not know whether that deals with the hon. Gentleman’s question.

Tim Boswell: It helps a good deal with one of our major worries, but I have a rather narrower question for the Under-Secretary. The benefit sanction of course applies to the recipient of housing benefit. The Under-Secretary has said that most of the cases that she envisages would involve single persons but, as it happens, much of the debate has been about families, partly because of the Dundee project. Will she assure the Committee that the rehabilitation support will be holistic and available to the whole family, notwithstanding the fact that, technically, only one person stands to lose their benefit?

Anne McGuire: The hon. Gentleman has made a good point. We would not seek to victimise other members of a family where only one person is the perpetrator of the difficulties. There is a good case for ensuring that we support the whole family, and we will. To reassure Opposition Members and some of my hon. Friends, I have said that sanctions are more likely to be used on single people. The reason why we say that is that single people are more likely to be evicted for antisocial behaviour and are therefore more likely to be in the pool—if I may call it that—to be sanctioned.
Several new intervention projects have been established since 2003, six of which have been run by the National Children’s Home and one of which has been run by Sheffield city council. The rehabilitation results have been first class, because the process is not only about reintegrating people into their communities, but about ensuring that children attend school. For example, there are reports of an 84 per cent. improvement in school attendance, which illustrates the holistic approach highlighted by the hon. Member for Daventry.

Adam Afriyie: There are many such projects, including those in Aberdeen and other places that the Minister has mentioned, but will she tell us whether financial sanctions were imposed on the families involved?

Anne McGuire: I said to the hon. Gentleman earlier that we are using such projects as illustrations of the benefits of rehabilitation. Yes, of course they are operating under the current process, but to repeat my earlier point, the most severe sanction in the instance to which we are referring this afternoon has already been levied. The most severe sanction is the eviction of people from their home. We are providing the opportunity for that sanction to be lifted and for people to move back into housing.

Danny Alexander: The Under-Secretary made a sensible point about pilots. Previous exchanges have brought a question to my mind: if the sanctions are piloted for two years in certain areas but the national network of rehabilitation is rolled out throughout the country, does she foresee the evaluation of comparing performance in areas where sanctions apply with areas in which they do not apply, so that it is possible to understand whether sanctions make any difference in themselves to the success of rehabilitation processes?

Anne McGuire: I have actually already answered that question and said that a comparison would be made between the piloted areas where there would be a sanctions regime, if necessary, and those areas where there would not be a sanctions regime.
To pick up on the comment by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, let us consider the neutral stance of organisations, including the Local Government Association, to that particular housing sanction because it is significantly different from the previous ones. As I have said on a few occasions, it is post-eviction sanction. We appreciate the grave misgivings and worries that were expressed about a sanction when someone was in situ in a house in receipt of benefit. However, although issues have been raised about some of the details, there is a far more neutral approach to the benefit sanction in principle that we are discussing. The hon. Gentleman has highlighted the worries about the previous sanctions that we had put out for consultation.
The fact that there was widespread anxiety about such matters meant that we did not pursue them. However, we still believe that it is important for those very few people who have tried and tested the system to the nth degree that we consider another way to deal with such matters. I know that hon. Members are worried, and rightly so, about people with mental health difficulties and those who might have behavioural problems. Yes, that will be part of an assessment involving individuals, households and their needs.
I reassure the Committee that we do not intend to push people into rehabilitation services that would not be appropriate for them. I recognise some of the scenarios that have been presented by members of the Committee about people with behavioural difficulties that perhaps can be misinterpreted. We shall obviously be working with local authorities, many of which will have significant skills in the area of assessment of those with difficulties.

David Ruffley: Can the Under-Secretary say whether she would like to pilot the proposal from Shelter and Citizens Advice to the effect that the 30 per cent. docking would be reduced to 10 per cent. for vulnerable people?

Anne McGuire: The hon. Gentleman will understand if I do not give him a definitive answer to that question. We are aware of the proposal and I am sure that members of the Committee will come back to it at further points in the process.

Kali Mountford: May I pursue the point about domestic violence? It often happens that the person who ends up being evicted was the victim of someone else’s crime. I know of cases when the whole community gangs up on the victim rather than the offender and the person is misidentified as an offender when they were not. If we were to pilot such a project, there would have to be a proper understanding of how those offences are pursued.

Anne McGuire: My hon. Friend speaks words of wisdom. I recognise the position that she has highlighted and, once again, that is an area where we shall be working very closely with local authorities that have expertise and knowledge. I am sure that they will engage with the local network of voluntary and charitable organisations that have front-line experience, not only in domestic violence but, as I said earlier, in particular circumstances that, if not handled properly, could result in an eviction when not all individuals in a household are the perpetrators of antisocial behaviour. I hope that the Committee will endorse the clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 28 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 29

Housing benefit and council tax benefit for persons taking up employment

Jim Murphy: I beg to move amendment No. 67, in page 26, line 11, at end insert—
‘( ) For the purposes of subsection (1) a person must be treated as entitled to housing benefit or council tax benefit by virtue of the general conditions of entitlement if—
(a) he is not so entitled to that benefit at the time he or his partner ceases to be entitled to the prescribed benefit as mentioned in subsection (1)(b), and
(b) his entitlement to housing benefit or council tax benefit (as the case may be) ceased during the prescribed period before that time.’.
I am delighted formally and belatedly to welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Amess, this early evening in London.

Jeremy Hunt: Has the Minister noticed that the sun is about to set over the shoulders of the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks)?

Jim Murphy: I would have noticed, of course, but my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire is in Belfast today, so it would have been pretty difficult. I notice if I turn around that the sun is in fact setting behind my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown). Of course, the sun always shines in Dumfries. The sun may be shining in Belfast, but it may set a little later there because of its latitudinal position.
We now come to the substance of the Bill—the extended payment schemes on housing benefit and council tax benefit. Clauses 29 and 30 are technical, as is the amendment. With your indulgence, Mr. Amess, I shall rewind our proceedings—almost halfway—to clause 15 to confirm formally to the Committee that a request was made for the paperwork on private and voluntary providers, and that all 240 pages are in the Library. They will also be placed on the DWP website. After careful consideration, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I decided to make them available unedited. All paperwork that was made available to potential private and voluntary sector contractors and providers is now available to all members of the Committee and, by extension, all Members of this House and of another place. Thank you, Mr. Amess, for your indulgence in allowing me to share that with the Committee.
The extended payment scheme in the amendment and in the clause is aimed at providing additional housing benefit and council tax benefit support for people coming off prescribed benefits for work-related reasons. The structure of the scheme is similar to existing schemes, with the detailed entitlement conditions described in secondary legislation, thus providing the flexibility to keep the schemes under review.
Under the current schemes, the housing benefit and/or council tax benefit claim has to be ended before an extended payment can be made. Once the extended payment ends, a person has to make a new claim if they think that they might be entitled to housing benefit or council tax benefit. The purpose of the amendment is to preserve a feature of the current extended payment scheme. For ease of reference, I shall refer to it solely as housing benefit, although the same rules will apply for council tax benefit.
The amendment is concerned with certain people whose housing benefit stops, for example because they have moved out of their home to start work in another local authority area. They would not usually receive an extended payment, because their entitlement to housing benefit would have ended before they ceased to be entitled to a qualifying benefit for the extended payment. The subsequent ending of the qualifying benefit for work-related reasons, one of the basic conditions for the entitlement to extended payment, would have no effect as the housing benefit claim would have already been closed. The current scheme allows a grace period if the move takes place in the week the person takes up employment or in the preceding week, and the powers in the clause must be amended to allow that to continue.
The proposed amendment would give the Secretary of State the power to prescribe in regulations a period before the cessation of qualifying benefit, during which the person would be treated as being entitled to housing benefit or council tax benefit. The intention is that the period should be the same as that in the current schemes, making special provision for cases in which housing benefit and/or council tax benefit ceases due to a person moving out of their home in the week that they take up employment or in the preceding week. 
I have no idea whether you are minded to have a clause stand part debate on this important but technical issue, Mr. Amess. However, given my comments, I hope that both amendment No. 67 and the clause will be included in the Bill.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 29, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 30 to 32 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 33

Supply of information by rent officers

Danny Alexander: I beg to move amendmentNo. 259, in clause 33, page 28, leave out lines 21 to 23.
This Committee seems to move in fits and starts: long periods of debate on some clauses followed immediately by periods of dramatic progress. I intend to speak to the amendment briefly, because the issues that it seeks to address have been well aired in earlier debates, not least in remarks made by the hon. Member for Colne Valley on clause 27. However, it gives the Under-Secretary the opportunity to answer some of those points in more detail.
The amendment seeks to probe the circumstances in which the information prescribed in subsection (1) is to be provided for use by the Department. Will the Under-Secretary clarify whether information relating to individual cases will be required to be provided for those five areas listed in subsection (1)? Is the intention to prescribe general information about housing benefit or specific details about a case, relating, for example, to individual child support cases, when such information may be shared? Will she explain the Government’s intentions?

John Penrose: I should like to press the matter a little further. We have discussed, particularly in the debate on the single room rent restriction, whether rent officers are getting their decisions right in all cases. There was much disquiet in that debate about whether they are setting single room rent levels correctly. It was felt that there could be a vicious downward spiral: the level was set too low, which led to shortfalls in claimants’ benefits, which in turn they had to make up. That also had a negative knock-on impact on the supply of suitable properties, which made it harder for rent officers to determine what the correct rent level should be.
One obvious way to deal with some of these problems and allow a degree of external verification and audit, and justification as to whether the rent officers are getting such decisions right, is to increase the amount of transparency. We could shine a little more sunlight into potentially murky corners by ensuring that rent officers show their workings when they take the decisions about the local housing allowance in any one area. I am sure that it is germane and important for the single room rent restriction, but it will be important in respect of many other classes of property.
As the earlier amendment about the single room rent restriction was not agreed to, my suggestion is an alternative way of dealing with the problem—a point that I was making at the time of that earlier debate—and it would be tremendously beneficial. I see no downsides in making the information available to the public and to all interested parties, so that they can check that the decisions are justifiable. In the spirit of open government, I therefore hope that the proposal will be relatively easy for the Under-Secretary to agree to.

Anne McGuire: Once again, I hope I can allay concerns of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey as expressed in the amendment. Clause 33 establishes a gateway, enabling the Secretary of State to require rent officers to pass information to him or to a person providing services to him, for various specified purposes, including social security purposes. The information is already being provided under existing powers, but the Secretary of State can only request the information.
Taking forward legislation to facilitate the local housing allowance roll-out has provided a suitable opportunity to enable the Secretary of State to require rent officers to provide him with information in a manner and form that is useful to him. The information will include details such as how many determinations rent officers have made and what proportion of these have meant that housing benefit has been restricted. In future, it will also include information about the local housing allowance rates and the broad rental market rates.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey asked what personal information would be transferred, and I can assure him that we do not envisage that personal information would be transferred through the proposed gateway. Analysts tend to make broad assumptions based on their analysis, and that detail is not necessarily appropriate.
May I also answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose)? I appreciate that there is some concern about the transparency of the rent officers’ deliberations and I hope that in the last debate I highlighted the fact that there is a great deal of market evidence and information to be gathered, including that from professional contacts and letting agencies. It is difficult to see whether that information could be published in full because there would be potentially serious consequences. For example, the rates might be seen as an indicator of a customer’s housing benefit entitlement, and assumptions that would be very misleading to customers could be drawn from the unexpurgated information. Dare I say it, it could also encourage landlords to increase rents and we must be careful that housing benefit and local housing allowance do not start to lead the market in determining what the rent could be. If landlords increase rents, that could increase the shortfalls to the customer.
The average data for each local authority is published in the Rent Service’s annual valuation report. Concerns were raised by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee relating to data transparency, and my hon. Friend the Minister and I will look at the comments that have been made to see whether there is anything else we can say or do that will give comfort to hon. Members on the issue.
As with all benefit information that the Department holds, its use will be strictly governed and controlled. The information will be accessible, as now, only to certain officials of the Department and then only on an “if required” basis. Each time the information is accessed, the access has to be justified by a business case showing that it is essential for the effective running of the Department. The business case also has to show that Data Protection Act and European convention on human rights issues have been carefully considered. The information is essential to our ability to monitor the impact of our policies on all DWP benefits, but it is done within a framework of safeguards. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw the amendment.

Danny Alexander: I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for her reassurance on the transfer ofdata. She answered the point that I was getting at. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Danny Alexander: I beg to move amendmentNo. 265, in clause 33, page 28, line 26, at end add—
‘122G Supply by rent officers of information to claimants
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulation make provision about the obligation of a rent officer to provide information to claimants of housing benefit.
(2) The Secretary of State may impose on a rent officer obligations with respect to making available to claimants of housing benefit information about the basis of calculation of levels of housing benefit.
(3) Regulations under subsection (1) may require the production of information or documents used in calculating local levels of housing benefit.’.
I shall dwell on the point about data for a bit longer. Amendment No. 265 deals explicitly with the provision of rent and the making available of information that rent officers use in making their calculations. It would allow for the provision of information to claimants and so, by implication, make that information available more widely to the general public.
The amendment and this subject are particularly important, not just in relation to information on individual LHA rates, but more so to information that leads to decisions about what constitutes a broad rental market area. This issue is of concern to Members on both sides of the Committee and it seems to me that the key issue is this: a decision by a rent officer about what constitutes a broad rental market locality—to use the shorthand—has a great impact on people in that area. For example, would they decide that the entire city of Glasgow should be a broad rental market area, or would they look within the city and identify clear local markets where different conditions pertain and where, in order to maintain the social mix, different LHA rates and broad rental market areas should be established?
One could say the same about rural areas. A decision about whether the whole of Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey should be a broad rental market area would be of great significance. That is especially the case because—picking up on a point made by the hon. Member for Daventry—in rural communities dominated by second homes and holiday homes, rental prices are likely to be much higher than perhaps in the more deprived parts of the city of Inverness. So those decisions can have a real effect on where people can afford to live if in receipt of housing benefit.
That it is not possible to understand the basis on which rent officers make those decisions is a matter of great frustration for many people. The information that they use to make those decisions is not publicly available. I welcome the fact that our deliberations have so far been conducted in a spirit of openness, as was shown by the decision of the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform to make available all documentation on the contracting-out arrangements. It would be in a similar spirit of openness if the Government were to adopt the amendment—it is a simple change—or something like it, to enable greater public access to information supplied by rent officers.
In response to the previous amendment, the Under-Secretary made the point that making information publicly available could lead either to people thinking that they are entitled to a certain allowance or indeed to some landlords seeking to push up their rents to the level of the local housing allowance. However, those considerations pertain only to information relating to the rate of local housing allowance. In any case, the rate of that allowance in pathfinder areas has been published already—for example, on the Department’s websites. Regardless of whether that is the case when the scheme is rolled out, the rate of allowance for different categories in an area will be obvious to everyone and so the questions about people thinking they have an entitlement or landlords knowing what the rate is will apply anyway.
The information that people will need to help them understand the considerations taken into accountwhen establishing broad rental market areas will notbe available. That is critical, and I hope that the Under-Secretary will make it clear that the Government accept the need for that information to be available in relation to the broad rental market areas. Even if the amendment is not acceptable to her, I hope that a suggestion will be made at a later stage to enable openness.

Kali Mountford: I wish to give my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary the opportunity to put it on record that she has agreed to meet me and representatives of CHAS to discuss the proposal and other matters, so that we can consider whether a degree of transparency may properly be supplied. There could be dangers in that, as I outlined at greater length earlier in our proceedings. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her acceptance of our concerns and willingness to consider them further. I welcome this opportunity to put on record my thanks for her help.

John Penrose: I should like to restate my concern about transparency, but I welcome the Under-Secretary’s comments on the previous amendment. She has said that she will reconsider the matter, so I do not intend to make a long speech. I await Report with interest. By that time, with any luck, she will have had a chance to reconsider.

Anne McGuire: We are on—[Interruption.] There was a lack of a gateway of communication network there with the Whip. We need to get semaphore working.
Many of the comments that I made on the previous amendment also stand in relation to amendmentNo. 265. We need to be careful how we put information into the public domain. I appreciate that, under the current housing benefit rules, it can be confusing for customers to work out what their housing benefit will be, and that is one reason why we are introducing the local housing allowance. We are committed to publishing the rates for that allowance and the broad rental market areas every month through the Rent Service. That will assist customers greatly and allow them to see in advance the maximum level of housing benefit for a particular size of accommodation and what it will mean for them. It will provide a more transparent system of calculations and of giving information to customers.
I assure the Committee that the Rent Service answers questions from individual customers about how decisions have been made and the direct impact that they will have on those people. Of course the service must have regard to public law requirements such as the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. To ensure transparency and accountability, the Rent Service will also publish maps of various locations on its public website.
I hark back to my comment earlier that it is difficult to publish some parts of the information gathered, partly for the reason that I gave earlier—the distorting effect that it could have on the local market. The data could also undermine customer confidentiality and have an impact on the relationship with local stakeholders. With those comments, and with thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley, whose point I appreciate and whom I will be delighted to meet, I ask the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw his amendment.

Danny Alexander: We might wish to discuss this issue again at a later stage, particularly the information used to define what a broad rental market area will be and whether an area should be one. I accept fully what the Under-Secretary says about the need to keep personal information confidential, and I accept the worries about individual cases, but I see no reason why information on the generic decision about where a BRMA should be and what will constitute one should not be made public. I accept that the Under-Secretary wishes to consider the matter further, and I look forward to the results. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill, as so far amended, to be reported.
Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr Heppell.]

Adjourned accordingly at Five o’clock till Tuesday28 November at half-past Ten o’clock.